


When Faced With What Is Unplanned And Terrifying

by aprill99



Series: Overheard Conversations [11]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Car Accidents, F/M, Papa Lance, Protective Oliver, olicity - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-05
Updated: 2016-06-05
Packaged: 2018-07-12 12:38:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7103779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aprill99/pseuds/aprill99
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For all of his seemingly reckless behavior, Oliver Queen has always been a planner. He thinks and strategizes. In Quentin Lance's opinion it's Queen's way of keeping the world controlled, manageable. It also makes him really freaking brilliant at a selection of board games. Moreover though, Lance knows that Oliver Queen makes plans to keep the people that he loves safe. So when uncontrollable yet mundane things happen, like Felicity being hit by a mother going too fast in a van on a rainy day to get her sick child to the doctor, well those situations are about enough to make him snap.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Faced With What Is Unplanned And Terrifying

Lance had learned lately that Oliver Queen had a way of working through every single possible angle of a situation. He had a very specific way of doing it. When situations were presented where it ended up necessary to coordinate and think through a strategy Oliver would suddenly go very still, and fix his eyes on a blank spot on the walls, floors, or ceiling.

His face took on the sort of contemplative expression Lance had used to see on his face on rainy days when Oliver and Laurel would stay inside and put together jigsaw puzzles on the Lances' dining room table. Sara would sit beneath the table catching jig saw pieces when they skidded off the edge, or hop over to the canary Quentin had bought her and watch it twitter. Frequently she would manage to pull Oliver away to look and comment on something or other. Neither of them had ever really had the patients to stand still and work the way Laurel had.

That said, whenever Oliver had actually decided that he really wanted to work out the puzzle he had done the same thing. Sat very still and silent. On the surface, it normally looked a little bit like he was spacing out. If you looked a little closer though, at the eyes, that was were you could see an uncompromising sort of focus.

When Queen had been a kid that level of focus had been almost funny. In the stretch between Oliver being a kid and the island that kind of concentration and focus just plain hadn't shown up. As far as Lance knew the only thing Oliver had planned during that time had been the kind of parties that Lance had frequently broken up with a badge and a squad car.

Since Oliver had come back from the island his expression when planning was about a million times more terrifying. These days when Oliver was focusing Lance could almost see his eyes turn in to ice chips. The people who had spent more time around Oliver like Felicity and Diggle could probably see wheels turning inside his head. Unfortunately, Lance doubted if they could ever actually tell what exactly was spinning.

Lance noticed that Oliver had developed in to the kind of person who would start a chess game with someone and plan through the next eight turns from both players with a contingency plan for every possible move that could be made. When it came to fighting off mass murdering super villains Lance was pretty sure this was helpful. However, that didn't mean it wasn't a little terrifying under different circumstances.

Felicity had organized a team Arrow normality fun night once that Lance had been invited to. It had involved movie watching at first, but watching action movies or dramas rapidly lost appeal when your life might as well have been on screen. Eventually, they had ended up playing the board game Risk.

Suffice it to say, Oliver had won. More accurately he had planned well enough and executed every move for board game style world domination in the shortest possible time span anybody ever had. It had been concise and impossible to challenge.

Risk had only been a board game, but Lance had still felt a chill run down his spine when Oliver had looked up at all of them with a blank expression after winning. The kid was essentially the uncontested commander/ruler of the single most powerful group of armed killers in the entire world plus a magical hot tub to bring him back to life. It was probably good that Oliver Queen could at least be counted as a relatively good guy.

As long as you didn't look at it as objectively. You know, like a normal person with an unscrewed sense of morality, legality, or personal involvement. If you were that person you arrested everybody and did some heavy duty criminal sentencing.

The point was that Lance had learned that Oliver had become the sort of person who planned. Not the broad spectrum, five-year, future, bucket list kind of plan. More the I-will-carry-out-the-last-wish-of-my-father, break in to the highly secured building for information/ whatever else we need this week, evade the evil psychopath who wants to kill us, kind of planner.

Lance had to admit that Oliver Queen's life was probably the best example possible of why five year plans were essentially crap. Bucket lists were probably no good for him either. Why plan a list of things to do before you die when the day you die will probably be tomorrow? That was just a recipe for depression.

So no, Oliver Queen was not a five year kind of planner. Lance had worked out that Oliver was more the kind of planner who saw where everyone was at a respective point A, noticed all of the crap at point B, and then planned and calculated the way to get all of them to the right point C. Whatever happened in the random middle was more a deal-as-you-go thing with team Arrow than it was the planned out part.

After watching the team, Lance had seen that if anyone worked out those smaller details it was Felicity. Not that Oliver, Diggle, and Thea didn't notice smaller details. They did. It was clear in the way their eyes flipped around every room and situation they walked in to the second they got there. They just noticed those little details one situation at a time without looking for details in the next one.

Oliver calculated, planned, strategized, and manipulated. Malcolm Merlyn still took the cake for maniacal planning, but Lance had been in the room when Oliver had planned to exchange Damian Darhk for the virus. He had heard Malcolm say "that is remarkably ruthless and cold. I approve." The older man had looked at Oliver with a chilling expression of smug, pride. To Lance it had looked like a twisted version of the look some parents get when their kids graduate from college.

So when things were unplanned, Lance could actually see the metaphorical carpet slip from under Oliver's feet. He knew the feeling that went with that expression all too well. It was the way it felt when your stomach jammed it's self in to your throat and then dropped down to the soles of your shoes.

Unfortunately, accidents were a part of life. Like when someone bumps in to you in the hallway and spills coffee all over you. Or when the breaks in a car give out when your crossing the street.

So of course it was an accident.

When the breaks in a car don't engage and the car hits you crossing the street it's always an accident. Especially when it's raining and there's no visibility. Especially, especially when the soccer mom with the little five year old in the back of the van with the one hundred and two degree fever in the back of the van is sobbing and having a break down and calling every emergency number there is.

That situation could only be an accident. That was why there were two categories when cars hit pedestrians. Accident, and hit and run.

Captain Lance was the first to admit that when he heard about Felicity Smoak being admitted to Starling General Hospital ICU after being hit by a minivan he had called in a deputy to run plates on the car and a background check on the owner as he moved out the door. What with everything that had happened he just didn't trust that it hadn't been on purpose without checking first.

But it had been. Melissa Conway had just been a single mom who hadn't been able to get her breaks replaced and hadn't been able to see in the driving rain. She had panicked and been trying to get her little boy to the emergency room. Just an accident.

Lance got to the hospital in record time, and he wasn't the least bit ashamed to say that he had used his siren and broken every single speed limit and traffic law between the precinct and the hospital. The only driving law he hadn't broken was calling while driving. He had left his phone in his pocket and itched to use it to call and check on Felicity's condition all the way to through drive.

He barged in to the emergency room flashed his badge and demanded to know everything about her that he possibly could. The nurse at the information desk had been unsure about weather or not telling a cop would be in violation of doctor-patient confidentiality until Laurel had stalked in to the room with an expression that said she was ready to rain down hell. If Lance hadn't been panicking he would have been damn proud of his daughter.

Quentin couldn't understand half of the legal mumbo-jumbo that Laurel had used, but what it had basically boiled down to was that he was listed as one of Felicity's emergency contacts and eventually she had forced the nurse to give him details.

Felicity was stable but she had had internal bleeding, suffered a concussion, and had two compound fractures in her left leg. None of her injuries had been deemed inoperable, or unfixable without recovery time. The internal bleeding was apparently supposed to be the kind that would heal up on it's own. Her leg would take time and a very uncomfortable cast, but the thing they were worrying about was the concussion. The doctors couldn't even test it until she woke up.

They didn't say it, and it was possible they weren't planning to, but the unspoken "if" was jangling in Lance's ears. He had lost too many innocent people he cared about- lost too many daughters for this to go bad to.

Laurel's hand had tightened on his forearm as the nurse spoke and as soon as she was done Laurel had led him to Felicity Smaok's recovery room where he stopped cold in the doorway. That was the moment Lance decided that he was willing to try whatever it took to have Felicity's eyes open again as soon as possible. Weird Palmer manufactured nano-tech or League of Assassins magical hot tub, whatever it took.

Not only because the sight of Felicity lying on a hospital bed attached to at least eight different sets of tubes and monitors made him feel like his blood had been replaced by ice. That was a major percentage of it. The rest was the fact that Oliver Queen was sitting right next to her bed, holing her hand and staring down at her face with an empty, ashen expression. He looked like his mind had been burned out from the inside.

Speaking as a member of the Starling City population who fought crime, on a very professional level Lance needed that look to leave and never come back. On another level all together Lance knew that that expression was the look of a man who was probably only inches away from having nothing to lose, and everyone knew that there was nothing more dangerous when the person was normal.

From Oliver that would end up meaning the absolute annihilation of nearly everyone Oliver Queen and the people he loved had ever suffered at the hands of. Now that would include a mini-driving mom. As a protector of the common good Lance couldn't exactly let that happen, but if the emptiness in Oliver's current expression ended up being backed with fire there wouldn't be a thing in hell Lance could do about it.

On a personal level, Lance couldn't stand seeing a kid he had known since childhood look like that. He had seen Laurel look empty when Tommy had died and it had taken everything Lance had to pull her back over the edge. In the last year Lance had seen Oliver survive the death of both of his parents, his best friend, Sara, and probably countless other people in the last eight years that Lance had never heard about. Each loss had piled up on top of Oliver, and Lance had now seen enough to know that the death of the girl he loved would be the straw that snapped the camel's back.

If that happened, there wouldn't be a medical innovation in hell that would pull Oliver back over that edge. Oliver Queen waked on a razor edge nearly every day. Lance got the impression he was seeing what it looked like the second before he went over. The moment he knew it was coming, and had accepted the approaching fall.

Oliver had hit the ground before and somehow managed to stick himself together again. Lance could see that that car accident was making Oliver reevaluate weather or not it was worth it to keep fighting gravity.

"She's going to be okay man," Diggle said lowly from the chair he sat in on the other side of the bed. Oliver nodded numbly and Diggle reached across, laying a hand on his shoulder and shaking it until Oliver's eyes snapped to his. "She's going to be okay," Diggle repeated. "Are you hearing me right now Oliver? Felicity is going to be okay." He drew out each word slowly. Lance recognized it as the same way of speech soldiers used on shell shocked comrades.

Oliver stayed silent for a long moment. He was in a position to be able to see Lance if he wanted but Quentin got the feeling his focus was really only big enough for one thing besides Felicity at the moment. "She might not wake up," Oliver said finally. His voice was horribly hollow.

"She will," Diggle enforced. "Come on Oliver, do you really think Felicity would ever bail on you if she had something to say about it?" The former bodyguard looked down at Felicity with all of he protectiveness of the position he officially held mixed with the caring of an older brother. Lance had noted that John Diggle was like a bear. Vicious in the face of threats but fiercely protective of the people he cared about. It was a quality that Lance guessed had been started by being a big brother, refined in the military, and emphasized by fatherhood.

Diggle lowered one hand to the one of Felicity's that Oliver wasn't holding. "Our girl is a fighter," he said. "She'll wake up."

Lance saw Oliver bight so hard in to the side of his cheek that he wouldn't have been surprised if Oliver had started spitting up blood. "This wasn't supposed to happen," Oliver ground out through his teeth. "I planned for almost everything," he continued. "I have a will written and a plan to keep all of you taken care of. But I didn't plan this. Never this." 

Diggle's next words told Lance two things. "What's in the will?" he asked. The first thing this told Lance was that Oliver may operate on high survival mode, but he never actually planned to outlive any of them. The second thing was that John Diggle already knew that. It was a good distraction tactic to.

"It's not just a will," Oliver said quietly. "The will is involved, but their was more to the plan than that." He swallowed heavily and then kept going, his eyes back on Felicity's closed eyes. "The will handles the simpler things. The company, the money, health, life insurance, power of attorney, that kind of thing."

"And the rest of it?" Diggle said, pushing lightly when Oliver didn't seem inclined to continue.

It was another long moment before Oliver spoke again. "Safety," he said finally. "When I die I have arrangements to keep you all safe." Lance noted that he didn't say if I die. He had said when.

"The League?" Diggle guessed.

Lance saw Oliver nod. "Matseo once told me that one of the benefits of being the new Ra's would be that Felicity would be safe." He shaped the word "benefits" with a disgust so thinly veiled that Lance could hear it plainly. "I lead the League now, and they do what I say. I've told them to protect all of you well past my death."

Quentin got the feeling that those orders had probably been given with some very strong emphasis and careful wording to avoid the exploiting of any loopholes. If he had to guess, Lance would probably say that Oliver had told them to protect all of his loved ones with their lives until the last breath had left each and every one of them due to nothing apart from natural causes. That would have been the smart thing anyway, and whatever the tabloids believed Oliver Queen was not stupid.

"There's also the Bratva," Oliver continued emptily. "It might not really work for all of you, but Anatoly liked you and Lyla when he met you and he leads the Brotherhood. He owes Sara from the Island so it's possible Laurel and her dad will be safe to." Lance wasn't particularly sure how he felt about the fact that the Russian Mob was supposed to be looking out for him and his family, but he decided to shelve the issue.

"And Felicity?" Diggle prompted.

Oliver sighed and dragged a hand over his face tiredly. "The Bratva is a very strict patriarchy," Oliver said slowly. "The rules don't exactly change with the times." He let the words trail off for a moment and then shrugged. "Anatoly saw her with me."

Diggle nodded and Lance understood the implication of the words. From what he knew Queen was a Bratva Captain, a high level member of the organization. That meant that if he showed up somewhere with Felicity and indicated that she was supposed to be protected then Felicity would be able to walk down a back alley in Moscow completely without fear. The members of the Bratva may be mostly sons of bitches they were damn protective of the women involved. Old Russian style patriarchy to the core.

"Damn it!" Oliver swore suddenly, pushing back from the bed and jumping to his feet.

He paced over to the window and Lance saw Diggle sit back in his chair regarding him. "This isn't your fault Oliver," Diggle said, slowly and calmly. Lance could hear a measured quality in his voice that suggested h had talked Oliver back from this sort of ledge before. "In fact," the bodyguard continued. "Based on everything you've told me it seems like you did everything you could have to prevent something like this."

"And it wasn't enough!" Oliver hissed. It was much worse than if he had shouted. Shouting would have been normal. Instead Lance thought that the strain in his voice held too much fury. The kind that bubbled over and boiled out your insides.

The worst bit was that Lance didn't think it was directed at the world in a way that might have made sense. Oliver Queen was furious with himself. Not so long ago Lance would have jumped for joy at the idea that the universe was finally hitting Queen back the way he deserved. Pain and anger would have been emotions he would value in him.

Now Lance found himself fighting the urge to walk the rest of the way in to the hospital room to try to comfort him.

"I plan everything I can to keep her safe," Oliver said, almost spitting the words out between his teeth. "To keep all of you safe. And it wasn't enough."

"You can't control the universe man," Diggle said, sounding tired. "You can't put bubble wrap on the world, and you know she," he gestured to Felicity. "Would pop all the bubbles even if you tried." The bodyguard leaned forward and rested his hands on the edge of the bed. "Accidents are a part of life, and you may be corporate master of the universe, a hero, and a leader in two powerful organizations but you can't actually plan against heavy rain and faulty breaks on a minivan."

Lance heard the sound of footsteps charging up the hall and turned towards them. Ray Palmer was walking quickly down the hallway carrying a padded medical case with Laurel right next to him.

Palmer spared Lance a quick nod and knocked lightly on one post of the doorframe. Oliver's eyes flicked towards him automatically and Lance fought down a feeling of relief. If Oliver was back to being able to track movement and focus it was a definite step forward from staring blankly at the wall.

Ray held up the case. "I come bearing nano-tech," he said. Oliver nodded and gestured for him to come in. Lance took that as his cue and slipped in to the room behind Palmer. The fact that Oliver didn't look at all surprised to see him made Lance think that he might not have been quite as out of it as he had seemed. Either that or Oliver's version of being out of it was more observational than anyone else's.

Inside the case was what looked like a typical syringe that Lance knew was full of the programmed technology. "We used this to fix me," Palmer said. "It didn't kill me, and I am the only one we've tried it on so technically that still is a one hundred percent success rate." Ray was babbling now and the hard glare Oliver managed to level him with was enough to end the word flow.

"Just do it," Oliver said.

"Okay," Palmer murmured. He injected the nano-technology in to Felicity's neck and there was a long moment where everyone in the room including Lance held their breath.

Felicity sat up suddenly, coughing ad gasping. She blinked dazedly and then focused on Oliver. "What happened? 'Cause if this is heaven then I am feeling sincerely let down."

"You were hit by a car," Thea said from the doorway. "You were... whatever, and Ray used his little mini nano-tech bots to make you better."

"Little mini nano-tech bots is redundant," Felicity pointed out tiredly.

Thea rolled her eyes and looked at Oliver. "She's better," she pointed out. "I'm going to go find everyone some coffee."

Laurel moved in to the room and gripped Palmer by the wrist. She began to pull him out the door and Lance knew from experience that there would be no point in the billionaire trying to resist. His daughter was like a bulldog. Impossible to shake off. "You and me are going to go and work on making that tech legal," she informed Palmer as they went. Ray didn't seem to be fighting it all that hard.

"I'm just going to leave so you two can have a minute," Diggle said, not bothering with an excuse before leaving.

Lance retreated to the door but stayed a moment. There was still a horribly blank fractured look in Oliver's eyes that he wanted to see fade a little before he left. The truth was that Quentin wasn't completely sure what a post-island Oliver was capable off when he was angry or scared, and he didn't particularly want to find out the hard way.

Felicity looked at Oliver and Lance could tell she was seeing the same thing and then some. "I'm okay Oliver," she said gently. "My head barely even hurts and I can practically feel the bone in my leg re-healing." She paused a moment, "the doctors did set it already right? Because if not this is really going to suck."

"You could have died today," Oliver said. He sounded almost numb again.

"I didn't though," Felicity pointed out. "Just like you almost die practically every week but you don't. Ray got here and now I'm fine."

Oliver's hand clenched and unclenched at his side. "I survive," he said stiffly. "But that situation is never supposed to happen to you. Diggle and I were talkig about it. I plan everything possible so that even if I die you'll be safe."

"Okay," Felicity interjected. "The fact that you have contingency plans with the express idea that you'll probably die does not in any way make me feel better. I told you with Ra's. You have to fight to live."

"I do," Oliver said, stepping towards the bed again. "But that doesn't mean I'll always going to win which is why I make plans so this," he gestured around at the hospital equipment, "doesn't happen."

Felicity sighed and held out her hand expectantly. Oliver slid his fingers in to hers without question and Felicity pulled him down beside her. She curled in to his side and tucked her head against his chest. Oliver wrapped his arms around her and shut his eyes tightly.

"You can't plan everything," Felicity said in a small, tired voice. "This wasn't a plan. Just a perfectly normal car accident is all."

Oliver didn't say a word. He just wrapped his arms a little tighter and pressed his face in to her hair. The monitors beeping was the only sound for a time. Slowly, Oliver placed a soft kiss on he temple where the head trauma from the accident had been. "I can try," he said with determination. "I will always try," he vowed.

"'kay," Felicity said, on the edge of falling asleep. "Just don't do anything stupidly pig-headed. No bubble wrapping. Now sleep."

Neither of them spoke for another long moment but Lance could tell from the tension in Oliver's body that he hadn't fallen asleep yet. Frankly Lance doubted he would until one of the doctors showed up to give Felicity a clean bill of health. He made a mental note to stop by the nurses station on his way out and turned to go. He had seen enough. Felicity would be alright and Lance was sure she would be able to pull Oliver with her.

It had still been a horrible scare for everyone involved. Further proof that planning for every bad situation on Earth couldn't actually change the fact that the universe was screws-loose crazy. The world was one big accident.

And they were all smack in the god damn middle of it.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys! Sorry it's been a while since my last update. I had to take final exams for school. The good news is that those are over now and I am officially on vacation! Updates will definitely be more frequent now apart from a few weeks when I go away. Anyway I hope you liked the chapter! I got the prompt for it a while ago at FanFiction.net and thought I would try moving the chapter over here for a bit of a wider audience. So, let me know what you think! Comments ad Kudos are loved, valued, appreciated, cherished, and stored forever on the internet :). xoxoxoxoxooxoxoxooxoxoxooxoxxoxoooxox


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